Today in History (February 27th):
1807: Birthdays: Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
1827: The first Mardi Gras was celebrated in New Orleans.
1844: The Dominican Republic was granted independence from Haiti.
1886: Birthdays: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black.
1891: Birthdays: David Sarnoff, RCA board chairman and father of American television.
1892: Birthdays: Actor William Demarest.
1897: Birthdays: Soprano Marian Anderson.
1902: Birthdays: Novelist John Steinbeck; Golf legend Gene Sarazen.
1910: Birthdays: Actor Joan Bennett.
1917: Birthdays: Former Texas Gov. John Connally.
1930: Birthdays: Actor Joanne Woodward.
1932: Birthdays: Actor Elizabeth Taylor.
1933: Adolf Hitler’s Nazis set fire to the German Parliament building in Berlin, blamed it on the communists and made that an excuse to suspend German civil liberties and freedom of the press.
1934: Birthdays: Consumer activist Ralph Nader.
1937: Birthdays: Actor Barbara Babcock.
1940: Birthdays: Actor Howard Hesseman.
1942: Opening salvos were fired in the Battle of the Java Sea, during which 13 U.S. warships were sunk by the Japanese, who lost two.
1943: Birthdays: Actor Mary Frann.
1947: Birthdays: Physicist Alan Guth.
1951: The 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, limiting presidents to two terms, was ratified.
1957: Birthdays: Actor Timothy Spall.
1962: Birthdays: Actor Adam Baldwin.
1964: The Italian government asked for suggestions on how to save the renowned 180-foot Leaning Tower of Pisa from toppling.
1974: The first issue of People magazine was published.
1980: Birthdays: Former first daughter Chelsea Clinton.
1981: Birthdays: Singer Josh Groban.
1982: An Atlanta jury convicted Wayne Williams of killing two of 28 young blacks whose deaths over a two-year period had shaken the city. Williams was sentenced to life in prison.
1990: The Soviet Parliament approved creation of a U.S.-style presidential system that gave Mikhail Gorbachev broad powers and established direct popular elections for the post. A federal grand jury in Alaska indicted Exxon Corp. and its shipping subsidiary over the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
1991: Allied troops liberated Kuwait City.
1992: Elizabeth Taylor celebrated her 60th birthday by closing Disneyland for an elaborate private party with her celebrity friends.
1994: The 17th Winter Olympic Games ended in Lillehammer, Norway.
1998: The Dow Jones industrial average closed at a record of 8,545.72, the first time it closed at more than 8,500.
1999: Nigeria’s transition to civilian rule was nearly completed with the election of Olusegun Obasanjo, a former military leader, as president.
2003: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein denied Baghdad had connections with al-Qaida or Osama bin Laden and Iraq would set fire to its oil fields and blow up its dams in response to a U.S.-led invasion.
2004: Two studies commissioned by the U.S. Roman Catholic church showed at least 4 percent of priests were involved in child sexual abuse from 1950-2002, with the peak year 1970 in which 10 percent of priests eventually were accused of abuse.
2005: The United Nations took a step to curtail worldwide smoking by announcing its tough tobacco control treaty had gone into effect.
2007: U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, identified as the target by the Taliban, escaped injury when a suicide bomber set off a device outside U.S. Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. Twenty-three people were killed in the attack.
2009: U.S. President Barack Obama told Marines in Camp Lejeune, N.C., he intended to withdraw most U.S. troops from Iraq by Aug. 31, 2010. He said as many as 50,000 troops would remain there for smaller missions and to train Iraqi soldiers. Revised data indicated the U.S. gross domestic product, the measure of a nation’s total economic activity, contracted 6.2 percent during October-December 2008, biggest drop since 1982.
2010: An earthquake registering 8.8 on the Richter scale struck off the coast of Chile, killing close to 600 people and destroying or heavily damaging nearly 500,000 homes.
2011: Nine foreign journalists, including a U.S. reporter who suffered a broken rib covering a planned protest in China, were beaten. Lawmakers in Arizona, Texas and several other states considered proposals to allow guns in the classroom. Only Utah permitted firearms on school campuses at the time.
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2012: A fire sent the Italian Costa Allegra cruise ship adrift off the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean. The more than 1,000 passengers were reported safe. Costa Allegra is part of the same fleet as the Costa Concordia, which ran aground Jan. 13, killing at least 25 people.
Quotes
“The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it.” – John Locke, philosopher (1632-1704)
“You lose a lot of time hating people.” – Marian Anderson, saying she had forgiven the Daughters of the American Revolution for withdrawing its invitation to perform because she was black
“Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.” – William Shakespeare, playwright and poet (1564-1616)
John Steinbeck (1902-1968) American Writer:
“A book is like a man – clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel, and for every looping flight a tap on the wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the feathers firm too near the sun.”
“A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.”
“Four hoarse blasts of a ship’s whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping.”
“Give a critic an inch, he’ll write a play.”
“I am impelled, not to squeak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion out of pride in my profession.”
“I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything.”
“I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.”
“I have never smuggled anything in my life. Why, then, do I feel an uneasy sense of guilt on approaching a customs barrier?”
“I have owed you this letter for a very long time-but my fingers have avoided the pencil as though it were an old and poisoned tool.”
“I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.”
“I’ve lived in good climate, and it bores the hell out of me. I like weather rather than climate.”
mogul
PRONUNCIATION: (MO-guhl)
MEANING: (noun), A powerful or influential person; magnate.
ETYMOLOGY: After Mogul, one of the dynasty of Mongol conquerors whose rule in India spanned from 1526 to 1857. Also moghul or mughal.
USAGE: “Sadly, we will have to wait for the contractual nondisclosure agreements of disenchanted employees to expire before we can get firsthand accounts of what it is like to work for the world’s most reclusive software mogul.”
archetype
PRONUNCIATION: (AHR-ki-typ)
http://wordsmith.org/words/archetype.mp3
MEANING: (noun)
1. The original pattern or model of something; prototype.
2. An ideal or typical example of something.
ETYMOLOGY: From Greek arche- (first, original) + -type (model, mold). Earliest documented use: 1605.
USAGE: “Madonna has been the icon and archetype to the current crop of pop princesses.” – Scott Mervis; For the Record: Madonna and Lionel Ritchie; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Mar 29, 2012.
Explore “archetype” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=archetype
bucolic
PRONUNCIATION: (byoo-KOL-ik)
http://wordsmith.org/words/bucolic.mp3
MEANING:
adjective:
1. Pastoral; rustic.
2. Of or relating to a herdsman or a shepherd.
noun:
1. A pastoral poem.
2. A farmer; shepherd.
ETYMOLOGY: From Greek boukolos (herdsman), from bous (ox). Earliest documented use: 1609. Other words derived from the same animal are bovine, boustrophedon, and hecatomb.
USAGE: “War Horse tells the story of Joey, a horse raised in the bucolic English countryside who is torn away from his home and sent to France to the battlefields of World War I.” – Spielberg Shares Storytelling Secrets in Paris; Daily News Egypt (Cairo); Jan 11, 2012.
Explore “bucolic” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=bucolic